rise against austerity in greece thousands rally it cuts targeting some of the most vulnerable leaving even the most crisis hardened greeks incensed. euro words take their toll on the french with president francois hollande watching his ratings plummet blow by economic blow. russia turns eastward at the asia pacific summit economic and political ties with china a growing ever stronger which could on the of the u.s. and its move for influence in the region. it's almost a dead heat between republicans and democrats in the race for the white house with both candidates looking to set apart their remarkably similar platforms.

with a look back at the past seven days top stories and the latest developments this is the weekly on. a restless night in greece's second largest city of thessaloniki with some fifteen thousand protesters taking a stand against a new wave of punishing budget cuts waving banners chanting slogans and even burning a flag the event was by and large peaceful as a small army of police officers knocked on these latest cuts are especially painful to the country's most vulnerable including pensioners low income workers and dependents but not everyone is against the cuts and i.m.f. debt inspectors are in athens to assess how the austerity drive is going and decide whether the government deserves more bailout money. has more now from thessaloniki . greek prime minister antonis samaras has said that he will do everything within his power to make sure the greece remains within the euro zone however he did

acknowledge that the cuts it is government to are making were both unfair and painful for the greek people but as unfair and painful as they are he says that the necessary as without being in the eurozone greece would die as a nation now he also says there are important is in terms of the country men taining any credibility that it has left on the global financial stage and not credibility is said to be tested quite soon is all that is from the so-called troika arrive in greece to see whether they've fulfilled their part of the bargain when it comes to making the cuts that they were asked to do on whether they received the next round of bailout money a massive thirty one billion euros worth of assistance whether those cuts are necessary they're certainly not popular here in thessaloniki we've seen thousands of people out on the streets of greece's second city demonstrating against the way

that the current governments are handling the financial crisis when the anger and the way the government is dealing with the crisis is what they're doing is wrong it's not just in terms of protest the greek people are airing their their grievances with the current government if you look at the latest political polls we're seeing that some are ases government lies in second place behind a a opposition party that's anti bailout money was perhaps more worrying though is if you see that in third place is the ultra rightist party golden dawn party that has a far right agenda some of called neo nazi in fact they certainly have a seemingly growing popularity here in greece which is concerning many people many people i've seen out in the streets here in testimony protesting what they call the fascist organizer. i have to say though this demonstration thessaloniki far more peaceful than some we've seen in the past in greece that people are upset airing

their views but they're certainly not of the violence a that we've seen in cities like athens as people demonstrate against the handling of the financial crisis. not only in greece where cuts are being met with a wall of public protest in portugal government slashes to social safety nets have been dubbed an act of war against the working class and next door in spain angela merkel's visit sparked street protests with demonstrators demanding an end to meddling in madrid's affairs thanks to the daunting financial storm clouds over the eurozone with the central bank forced to roll out the artillery the c.b.c. says it will now begin buying up euro nations debts to stabilize their foreign costs so that something people in darkness will be affected. this is the last last throw really i should make the point that back in two thousand and ten the your prince central bank spent nearly seven hundred billion euros buying greek greek war which did push down the interest rates down for about

a week. but it didn't didn't work thereafter and my prediction for what it's worth is that it won't work in the medium or long term this time either i mean they have a political problem with spain. and also the condition which the european central bank are seeking to impose on countries participating are such that. the very independence is under threat. it's anything but smooth sailing for the larger more stable european economies too in france the president's ratings are in a freefall as waste war an economic weakness take their toll on the public. sooner explains traditional means of dealing with stress just aren't cutting it anymore. france may have lost its title as the country with the highest per capita consumption of antidepressants but the french certainly have at last a peasant as of now with more reasons to be unhappy because the new record

unemployment levels of economy that's just not growing and we prospects all around and when they look to their new president they don't expect much of a future either so much so that sixty eight percent of french people are fearful for their future close to the record high of seventy percent in two thousand and five shortly after jacques chirac was reelected for a second term but france did manage to beat all other presidents in unpopularity after just one hundred days on the job sure i can lower ratings came after nine years in government and the bad ratings come after only four months. so it's catastrophic situation for you when you vote for change and you relate as the president doesn't have even a plan to deliver. the reforms you vaguely promised i mean of course you are. adding salt to injury the state just through

a life like to a struggling mortgage lender by guaranteeing its debts after launch explicitly declared the world of finance as his enemy during the election campaign. this craziness has to stop i think this financial sector is spending on the other side billions for things which are not a priority for us. francis began setting direct aid to anti assad regions in syria a former french colony a move that shortly followed along as promised. ignites a provisional government formed by the opposition an all too familiar style and french foreign policy that irks citizens like mathilde despite having voted for a law and what she calls france's intrusive behavior she says is all about securing financial interest. we can change president but the foreign policy doesn't change both main political parties decided to go to war in my native country to send the

french army to go and kill people and i rico today it is syrian money abroad that we're trying to get just like what happened with libya the french have a superiority complex to a point where they imagine that they are the one sitting under is what they don't know is that we see other people for their money. a teacher at a local school at a mother of three this is what she tells the kids see the films of the movie tell the kids to study hard improve their language skills and then they must think of their future outside of france are your confidence and at this point the french have clearly lost patience to us or sylvia r.t. paris. you're watching the weekly here in r.t. still ahead for you this hour crossing the line fears of the u.k.'s policy towards syria compact far as reports suggest british fighters are heading to the front line and could bring violence back home. the deadly shooting was

a separatist post-election party in canada francophone province of quebec highlighting the renewed tension. but first the world shifted to the east this week as heavyweight asia pacific nations gathered to decide how to prop up global growth the corn and weather of the russian far east didn't chill the warmth between russia and china whose friendship is seen as a strong asset to economic recovery but is the need some evidence is in the city of that of a stock when the other person was rounding up the results of the two thousand and twelve form which russia hosted for the first time. he basically again praise the fact that apec is extremely important as a region and as an organization it accounts for around fifty percent of the global economic output and global trade and therefore the shift is happening globally towards this region and russia is no exception and that in effect and has said that china plays an extremely important role as a driver of global economic growth actually in an exclusive interview that the

president gave prior to this forum that it was and also still stated the importance of russian chinese relations china is indeed becoming a global economic and political hub china has taken up this new leading role you know tony in russia's eyes but also in the always of the whole world what makes this rather special however is that russia and china are neighbors and our special relations took thousands of years to evolve to where they are. over the coming years we are bound to achieve a one hundred billion dollar turnover rate for that exclusive interview is of course available on our t.v. you tube channel you can catch it there but also i think more important was the q. and a session which followed that round up of the forum and letting the person had a chance to comment on this state of russian and european relations of course the euro zone is now in a crisis and therefore that in a question was asked as to what is happening between russia and europe is the trade

war he answered the situation is far from a called trade war and the fact that your commission is now right now looking into gas problems a so-called monopoly position on the eastern european markets is based on the economic problems in the region and that basically europe now wants to transfer some of this economic burden onto russia and a rather peculiar and one thing i would say question that letting a person was asked to comment on his recent stop the he made prior to the apec summit and that was in your model in russia. to teach a flock of cranes to fly south he was using a hang glider and the journalist said that basically it's created a whole wave of internet jokes a comparison also was made to russia's electoral race that only sixty three percent of the krays the cited to follow putin and the others decided to go somewhere else and this is what he had to say not all the queens follow him egypt only the weak

ones don't for me it was i must admit it's also the leader's fault the pilot's fault the not all the koreans follow and mediately if you fly is too fast and too high he can't keep up there are also birds who don't fly in a flock even if they aren't part of the flock they're part of our population and they should be taken care of as much as possible. and i was listening to that q. and a at the international press center here and the answer was followed by a standing ovation dmitri medvedev invalid overstock it's not just economic interest russia and china have in common they've also been agreements on international disputes much to the detriment of the u.s. says financial consultant got to money. the time between putin and hu jintao have been extremely strong and this has frankly been at the expense of relations with the u.s. and not overtly obviously but when it comes to issues like syria and iran there is

a great deal of court nation between the two sides on those political issues then you know these things spill over into the economic side as well of course you know we're starting to talk about how both countries handle the oil embargo that the u.s. has been sort of pushing on iran you know russia as a producer and china as a consumer they both you know the fact that they're harmonizing this really sort of helps to. counteract u.s. and u.s. influence and the ability to if the u.s. can exert its influence on its european allies in asia and japan specifically so we're seeing a lot of that. a powerful explosion has rocked syria's largest city aleppo the car bomb near two hospitals in the sports stadium killed at least seventeen civilians injuring forty others the city's been plagued by violence a massive battle between rebels and government forces have been going on for days

now on saturday troops loyal to president assad forces turn back an attack on a major military base the fighting comes amid reports that citizens from other countries are actively involved in the conflict as artie's laura smith reports there could be people with u.k. passports on the rebel side. to most britons going about their everyday lives the war in syria seems worlds away but for a few it's a struggle they feel personally involved in as the u.k. government put trey's president assad as an evil dictator there's evidence that britons are going to syria to fight for the opposition but area m.p. high lead mahmoud says some in his community have already gone there is particular individual who's actually gone back to bag. the moment it is came back in a few weeks time has been engaged in fundraising supporting people and putting people together to go back to people who say they. support the made work and other

. broad saying that they're going to support the resistance some says mahmood of british syrian extraction others of british muslims who feel their faith makes this their struggle but whatever their reasons for going the fear is what they'll be when they return they're trained in the art of warfare but they're also radicalized as well and then they want to then continue that reddit causation they want to bring more people on board and then perhaps their looks to try to. resolve some of the gripes they have here that's blowback the u.k. has already seen from another conflict here in london on the seventh of july two thousand and five the official report into the seven seventh's bombings revealed the existence of that two house of the four had been to afghanistan for so-called violent jihad back in the u.k. one hundred fifty card and says that tanweer together killed fourteen people in

combined suicide attack specific and seven bombers were only vaguely known to the authorities and that could be the case for fighters returning from syria too it's all very well to notify the u.k. borders agency but in reality there's very little they can do people that may move here to fight in syria will not go directly to syria they may stop in turkey or levon on iraq so the government will not be able to really know the. nation there's no real way of telling whether they're actually going to end up in syria there is no way to know. who when they enter syria who they'll be liaising with. their ideology is necessarily how g.'s and viewpoints by change in syria these are the scene. could greet them on their return and he islamist organization the english defense league is unlikely to take further radicalization of british muslims lying down creating more bad feeling and deeper fissures in an already

divided society full western whose british freedom party is allied to the e.t.l. says militant groups are preparing for a confrontation we're going to get further and further into this horrible situation of them and i assume they're militants and then you have small scale violence that starts and it's the tit for tat and that's why. you know i think we literally entering into a religious civil scenario so far the government's given the syrian opposition eight million dollars for non-lethal equipment including communications but ordinary britons could find themselves paying the far higher price of unrest and insecurity at home for this support for the syrian opposition laura smith r t. one more on the conflict raging in syria on who's doing the fighting with a member of the syrian social club a group advocating reform not the removal of

a sad but we've just been hearing about those british muslims involved in the fighting there in syria also we know about a french surgeon who volunteered to help rebels in syria saying that hope those he treated weren't syrian at all but foreign jihadists is this still a syrian revolution now it is not it has turned into a more regional conflict craps even some sort of an international war on syrian soil really i personally. demonstration on the seventh made two thousand and eleven. was a mystery mists outside the syrian embassy in london charging very. only. as an explanation does it we do. serious social club gathered outside the foreign office in london. june of the same year about a month and a half after that incident. sent them a letter saying well actually you're supporting people in this could have

a backlash a month later when i'm out of the way he shoot his famous or infamous jihad call on video the mainstream media here in the u.k. completely ignored the whole thing almost completely there was one newspaper actually reported it. so it is not surprising what we're seeing or hearing that there are jihadists who are coming into syria because the western powers have a long time seen this conflict as the same model or the same you know viewing point just like this with three decades ago. the problem we're having basically is that took so long to acknowledge that you had these. you know element after i think it was too late. the west is inadvertently supporting radical islam by officially backing the rebels and what you're saying is that the comeback could be that we'll see radical islamism in the home countries like france and

britain being fermented being promoted even further when they return i think the writing is on the wall what we've seen previously with the afghani with the afghani experiment so to speak was that the western powers have given these jihadists these extremist limbs the opportunity to win a certain war they've helped them they probably gave them weapons and they won a war and they did this was because of the c m i six funding and backup but actually because they thought god actually gave them this victory and this has brought a lot of trouble. large segments of the societies of the muslim societies in the western countries let's talk about the support we're seeing now for the rebels we're seeing a lot of fighting raging in aleppo at the moment the army and the rebels both using heavy weapons and it seems now to be a war between equals no. i don't think it's equals we have to acknowledge that the support base for both parties is very little is relatively different i don't think

there is a large support for the free scene arm even the opposition figure if there are a lot of people who who do not probably like the regime but who hate the idea of violence and acknowledge that arming the rebels and arming. the opposition actually cost us a lot of bloodshed a lot of destruction infrastructure and so on and so forth so they are losing the arms insurgency is losing basically a lot of support there people now recognize that once loose people go into a certain village or a certain city then a lot of destruction is going to take place and people are leaving their houses and so on so i don't think it's a fight among equals obviously the outside world or the west in a sense would like to support the move as much heavy weapons as they could but they seem to be wary of the fact that such were at least if these people indeed win could actually turn against them so there is a little scrutiny that is taking place just briefly the u.n.

envoy brahimi is in egypt to secure his backing for peace now in syria allege atrocities often coincided with his predecessor's visits when they went to syria will this happen again. i think it already has because now in aleppo a couple of hours ago there was a huge explosion and i've seen the first pictures coming on syrian t.v. and you know complete buildings were turned into into rubble this trend has started basically with the with the security council whatever the security council met on syria there was an atrocity before that i think the most infamous one was supposed massacre on the fourth of february when we remember russia and china use a double veto against a resolution in the security council condemning syria so the be and this trend has continued in a sense we've seen a. massacre taking place when it was about to meet prisoners of the next day and so on. of course there are no surprise just briefly you're advocating reform there not a change in government in syria but the turbulence that's going on now and all the

failures of all the diplomatic negotiations with the the united nations do you think reformation now is just too late it's nothing can be done and it will definitely lead now to regime change. i don't think regime change is that easy at all actually i don't think the regime the syrian regime or the syrian government will fall the basic the basic issue is that a lot of syrians whether they like the current regime or not have stood for the central government they do not want the central government collapse because of the fear of the worst reform yes we need to make sure that after this crisis and hopefully sooner rather than later we still have the courage to implement the reforms steps that have been drafted over the past year we've seen that there was you know a project of reform. obviously there are things that can be changed but we hope that there will still be there after the crisis and in order to implement part of it at least member of the syrian social club joining me there in london thank you

very much for your perspective on the developments there in syria thank you for. barack obama's captivating showing at the democratic national convention this week appears to be paying off new polls give him an edge over republican rival mitt romney if only by the slimmest of margins and with just two months to go to the presidential vote both candidates will be working overtime to out shine the other the artes miniport now reports that may be a challenge. in two thousand me rock obama trying u.s. politics interest something of a pop culture phenomenon we want to those defining moments. a moment when our nation is at war our economy is in turmoil the democratic presidential candidate accepted his party's nomination value to rebuild america's moral standing and break from the policies of his predecessor the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in washington and the failed policies of george w.

bush four years after change occupied the white house america is still at war twenty three million citizens are unemployed and most of the national security policies cemented by george w. bush continue unabated or have been expanding the coded fixation of what were illicit abuses under bush imprisonment without trial spying without warrants we've now replaced imprisonment and torture largely with assassination which is actually not a moral improvement under obama's leadership guantanamo bay remains open the patriot act has been renewed warrantless wiretapping extended but cia black sites have closed targeted killings have been justified drone strikes publicly acknowledged military commissions codified however enhanced interrogation like waterboarding has been banned critics say obama has not only double down on bush's policies he's also raised the stakes signing the national defense authorization act made him the first

us president to assert the right to assassinate anyone anywhere without any legal sanction if there is a war cries out there we can the war cries iraq. tops the list this made many of those who voted for him hoping for change left disillusioned in fact what they appear to have voted for was more of the same obama's ratings are now the lowest of any incumbent president since the one nine hundred eighty s. the two major parties are very this are very much the same on all the important issues when it comes to spending more money than we have. engaging in foreign conflicts that we can't afford the cost of america's overseas military campaigns have contributed to a u.s. national debt that topped sixteen trillion dollars this week while obama's america is running on empty critics say wall street continues to play largely by the same rules that led to the global financial crisis there hasn't been regulation of the

banks in a sufficient way and the main crisis affecting the united states which is to say the financial clutch on the global economy and the corporate stranglehold on the political system hasn't changed at all because president obama comes from a coalition that led to that in the first place since obama has stepped into the white house america has seen an unprecedented rise in grassroots movements like the tea party and occupy wall street they'll both very different one thing uniting them is the claim that the people of america are being ignored by their own government the two major us political parties have historically gone to great lengths and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to highlight their differences yet following obama's first term in office the biggest change may be that more voters are likely to see a democrat and a republican as two sides of the same court merino court ny r.t. new york. you be watching the weekly here not in the coming up in

a few moments president vladimir putin will be telling us where he sees russia's future but first a brief recap of the week's top stories in just a couple of minutes stay with us.

download the official application to self choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's l.t.v. is not required to watch arts here all you need is your mobile device to watch our team any time any of that. is.